Jena Malone Reflects on Her Role in ‘Batman v Superman’

Jena Malone had a role in the Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and yet you’ve likely never seen her on screen. That’s because Malone’s role was edited out of the film’s theatrical cut and only restored in the Ultimate Edition home media release.

Speaking ot The AV Club, Malone says her DC Extended Universe fate doesn’t really bother her all that much. After all, she was just happy to be working with director Zack Snyder again after her experience working with him on Sucker Punch.

“I had some scenes,” she says. “It wasn’t—for me, the beauty of working with friends is that someone can call you up and be like, ‘I’d love for you to come and do this part for two days.’ And you’re like, ‘Yeah. Awesome.’ It negates all of the bullshit of auditioning and going between agents and all this other stuff and Zack Snyder and I really love working together and get along and have very similar work ethics. So when he was like, ‘Hey, I’ve got a little something for you,’ I was like, ‘Awesome.’ I didn’t really think much of it, nor did I expect anything of it. It was just one of those great, you know—two blocks away is a baker and here I am as a grain farmer. Cool, I’ll be over on Monday. We can make a loaf of bread. No big deal.”

However, Malone also says she learned a little something about show business after she was spotted on the Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice set, which led to rumors that she’d be playing Batgirl or Carrie Kelly - the Robin from the seminal Batman story The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller, which heavily inspired Batman v Superman – when in fact she had a relatively minor role as Jenet Klyburn, a scientist at the DC Universe super science institution STAR Labs.

“But for me, the funniest thing that I learned about that is you don’t have to be in a movie to let everyone think you’re in a movie,” she says. “I learned a really interesting lesson in the sense of false PR—by me being just on-set of that, there were all these swirling rumors that I was Robin. And I was like, wow, this is actually a really interesting technique to get a job—to pretend you have it. It was definitely a lesson in public relations that I hadn’t fully engaged with that I would love to reinterpret in maybe a political anarchist type of way. It’s cool.”

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice – Ultimate Edition, which includes Malone’s scenes as Klyburn, is now available on home media.

Justice League is now playing in theaters. The film will be followed in the DC Extended Universe by Aquaman on December 21, 2018, Wonder Woman 2 on November 1, 2019, Shazam on April 5, 2019, Cyborg in 2020, and Green Lantern Corps in 2020.